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Three days after the accident, Mark’s mother dragged her luggage off the carousel and searched for my face in the non-existent crowd. Waving like a child who didn’t really want her name called, I caught her attention.
Elizabeth had grown older since her last visit. Just four months ago this robust, small-town beauty appeared ageless. Now her bright blue eyes resembled diluted pools of water, the lines in her face sunk deeper.
When we hugged, her stiff body collapsed into mine. Tears soaked my thin T-shirt. I hated to admit how good it felt to be with someone who hurt as much as I did, who felt this wound so deeply. Friends and extended family expressed shock and sadness, but Mark’s accident didn’t impact their daily lives. It didn’t threaten to steal their only son away from them, or leave them with fatherless, children or a vegetable for a spouse.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Elizabeth clung to me in my embrace. The weight of her long hair, dyed a hard black to remove any hint of gray, blanketed my arms.
“It doesn’t feel real to me either. I keep thinking if we had celebrated my birthday a week earlier, or if I had just remembered to leave Ben’s toothbrush at home. If I could go back in time and tell Mark to brake or swerve or ...” My thoughts trailed off. Truth was, once we were in the crosshairs of that SUV, I don’t know what I could have done to save us.
Elizabeth pulled away and looked at me, red rimming the pale blue of her eyes. “I’ve been doing the same thing, thinking of ways I could have changed the outcome somehow. Maybe if we hadn’t let you talk Mark into staying here in San Diego. It could have completely changed everything. He’s our only child.” Her shoulders trembled.
My hands began to shake, wondering how badly Elizabeth wished it was me in the hospital instead of Mark. It didn’t matter, I needed to hold it together. “Were you able to track down Tom before you left for the airport?”
“Yes, he knows everything.” She stood a little straighter, sniffling and composing herself. “There’s another strike going on in Paris and the airports are all shut down. It will take at least another day before he can fly out. Of all the times to be stuck outside the country on a business trip. He’s beside himself that he can’t be here for his son.”
“Is there ever not a strike going on somewhere in France?” It felt nice to direct my frustration at something other than the details surrounding the accident, if only for a moment.
“Apparently not,” Elizabeth agreed. “Where are the kids? Are they with your parents?”
“No, my mom and dad are still in Chicago, they’ll be out tomorrow. The kids’ve been at the hospital with me. Jamie took them home a couple of hours ago.”
“Are you sure that was the best idea? Seeing their daddy like that could damage them. Ben doesn’t need any more problems than he already has.”
I bit the side of my finger in anxiety. Elizabeth had been here a matter of minutes and she was already getting under my skin.
Trying to ignore the sting of her reprimand, I tugged at a piece of crumpled tissue in my hand and wiped my nose. “Do you have all your bags?”
“All ready to go.” She patted her brand new piece of scarlet red luggage. Mark had bought it for her at the Flower Hill Mall on her last visit. At the time, we all joked that she wouldn’t get too many opportunities to use it.
As I led Elizabeth outside toward the parking lot, late May’s tepid night air soothed my nerves, a welcome contrast from the bone chilling air-conditioned corridors of the hospital and the belly of airport arrivals. “Mark’s surgeries went really well. They set all his broken bones and his doctors told me they should heal nicely,” I said, scanning the short-term parking for my silver Mercedes. “He’s still on a ventilator and in a coma, but that’s a good thing for the time being. It gives his body a chance to rest and heal.”
“Has he shown any new signs he’s going to be okay?” Elizabeth asked as I clicked off the car alarm and unlocked the doors.
“No.” I tossed her luggage inside the safety of the trunk. “All we can do right now is wait.”
***
Elizabeth found him laid out on one of the many beds in the Intensive Care Unit. I tried my best to give her privacy in the cramped, curtained off space. As she looked over her son, her eyes watered and her lips quivered.
Thin strips of white tape covered Mark’s eyes. A large tube ran from his throat, connecting him to the ventilator. More tubes ran from his groin, arms, and neck. Computers bleeped, muffled voices squawked orders over the PA, and nurses chatted in hushed voices at the main station in the middle of the room.
Lying there in that dim, cramped section of the ICU, Mark’s bloated and battered body looked more like a corpse than the healthy, handsome man Elizabeth had hugged goodbye only months ago.
Silent tears broke, slipping down her pale cheeks. My mother-in-law ran a finger over his forehead, pursing her lips at his freshly shaved head. Staples held together the long u-shaped gash running along the side of his left temple.
Smoothing out the thick beige blankets that warmed his body, I motioned to the two padded chairs by Mark’s bedside. “Let’s take a seat over here. The one with the permanent sag in the middle is all mine.” I attempted a smile.
Elizabeth didn’t respond. She stood over Mark’s hospital bed, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. I took a seat and waited for her to join me. She was a proud Southern woman, and I imagined this loss of control over her son’s fate, as well as her own emotions, inflicted extra pain. I wrung my hands and listened to the whoosh of rubber-bottomed nurses’ shoes walking the fake wood floor. When Elizabeth’s tears ran dry, she sat in the hospital chair and spoke in a hushed tone under the loud rush of the ventilator and beeping monitors.
“Thank you for taking care of him for us.”
“Of course,” I replied, “he’s my husband.”
She brushed the side of her nose with her index finger. “When Mark was young, he was so skinny and uncoordinated. He tripped over his own feet one day on his way home from school. A dog scared him and he just stumbled and fell. Put his bottom teeth right through his lower lip and gave himself a concussion.” She reached up and took hold of Mark’s limp hand while I held back fresh tears.
“When he came to, he had wet his pants and needed stitches on his lower lip. That’s how he got that little scar there.” She pointed to a splotch of skin on his swollen, expressionless face. “He came creeping through the front door trying to hide the blood and soiled pants from me. He was just so prone to accidents as a kid. From then on, I would work myself into a fit if he came home from school more than a few minutes late.” Elizabeth kneaded the back of her neck.
I had my own memories. “You should have seen him on our first date. I agreed to meet him at Jamie’s dorm. He showed up twenty minutes early with his hair slicked back and a dozen long stemmed roses in his hand.” At the time, I could hardly believe the cocky frat boy I’d met at a kegger party had gone to the trouble of cleaning himself up and buying me flowers. “I didn’t even have a vase to put them in. Jamie lent me one of her big plastic San Diego State cups.” I smiled and looked at the ground. “When he put his mind to it, your son knew how to charm a girl.
If he were awake right now, he’d know just what to say to make us feel better.” I warmed at the thought of it. “Another time back in college, soon after we started dating, Mark got stuck in traffic driving home from LA. He was supposed to come visit me.” I looked over at him with the ridiculous hope he would chime in to finish one of my favorite stories.
“Anyway, we’d only been dating for about a month or so and he’d promised to check out my new apartment when he got back into town. My roommates were both out of town for the weekend, and he said he would be there at nine the latest.
Let me tell you, I went a little nuts that day. I cleaned that shabby little apartment from top to bottom, washed the sheets, did the dishes, changed my outfit at least three times before settling on an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Everything was just right for him. So of course he was late. When he finally called me at a quarter till ten and said they’d closed down three of the lanes on the 405 and he’d be at least another hour, I was beyond furious. I suggested he skip coming over altogether I was so mad at him.”
“Why? He couldn’t control traffic.” Elizabeth interrupted my story.
“I don’t know. I think it scared me that I cared so much whether he showed up or not. He was the so-called ‘player frat boy’ and I had such a guard up with him. I needed to keep myself from finding him too charming or necessary in my life. That way it wouldn’t hurt so much if it didn’t work out.” I twisted the ring on my finger. “Anyway, he apologized profusely for not calling sooner, but I was inconsolable. I told him if he wanted to come over, I wasn’t going to speak to him.”
Elizabeth looked at me with her eyes narrowed in what I hoped was mock exasperation. “So, what did he do?”
“He said ‘OK’ like it was no big deal and then he kind of chuckled, which made me even more angry. I asked him what was so funny and he said, ‘It’s stupid, but I’m glad you’re mad at me for running late. It means you like me.’ He intuitively understood my brand of crazy. That touched me.”
I scooted my chair even closer to his bed, ready to share the best part of my story. “When he finally showed up at my place more than two hours late, my hair had gone flat and I had given up on keeping the apartment clean. I let him in through the security door, and he tried to give me a big hug right there in the lobby. I shrugged him off and reminded him I wasn’t speaking to him. He said ‘OK’ again without any hint of frustration and followed me back up to my place.
When we got there, I had music playing on my CD player. He listened for a minute and then he walked over to me.”
I gazed at Mark resting motionless in his hospital bed to see if there was the slightest indication on his face that he was registering any of this. He lay passive as I ran my fingers across the cool metal bar that kept him contained on the bed, but that was ok. It was such a beautiful memory. I could savor it for the both of us. Turning back toward Elizabeth, I continued. “So the music is playing. One of my all time favorites, The Fugees, Killing Me Softly. He took my hand and spoke into my ear, ‘We don’t have to talk, but can I dance with you?’”
I could hear all the lyrics swaying in my head. I was back there in my old apartment, slow dancing with my future husband. Butterflies were fluttering in my tummy, our possibilities were endless.
Then came reality. I was sitting in a cold Intensive Care Unit next to my grieving mother-in-law and near lifeless husband. I finished my story. “By the time the song finished, my exasperation evaporated.”
He had kissed me on the lips after that, so good it gave me the shivers. I knew right then I was in deep. He got me. He didn’t take my irrational bad mood seriously, and he knew just how to fix it, in the most romantic way possible. We had made love that night and that was it. I couldn’t imagine being with any other man ever again. I was his.
***
Weeks passed, spring turned to summer, and nothing changed. A small team of medical experts swept in and out of his room on regular, dependable shifts. I grew fond of his constant caretakers, especially Kate, his full-time day nurse. With her petite athletic body and light freckled nose, Kate felt familiar to me, as if we were old high school buddies. She looked after my husband as if he were family, monitoring his charts and medical devices with precision, patting him on the arm and telling him he was doing great even though he didn’t respond. I was grateful to have her on our team.
Day and night we took turns keeping our vigil, waiting for any sign Mark would come back to us.